MLS? We don't need no stinkin' MLS.
Now everyone can put their home up for sale with just a click. Put a price out there, someone wants to pay it, you're good to go.
Watch idiot realtors try to negative spin this one...
Zillow is for sales, not just snooping - The much-hyped website, which provides home values, now allows sellers to post listings
Real estate website Zillow.com became an instant hit by telling homeowners — and their nosy neighbors — how much their houses might be worth. Now, the Seattle-based company will help owners get the word out about how much they want in a sale.
Starting today, Zillow Inc. joins a growing list of websites that allows homeowners and real estate agents to post virtual "For Sale" signs for free.
The feature also plugs a hole on the site, which touts a database of more than 60 million U.S. residences but no information on what most viewers want to know: Is this home for sale?
The addition could pose yet another threat to the traditional system for buying and selling homes, analysts said.
"It's just one more chink in the armor of the established brokerage industry," said Steve Murray, an industry consultant based in Littleton, Colo. "It provides consumers with more choices."
December 07, 2006
Can you just smell the realtor fear? Zillow now lets you put up a for sale sign and price
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37 comments:
No that's just the normal smell of realtors!
No spin from me. Saw this coming from miles away. This is the real dawn of a new day.
I'm putting my listings on Zillow without hesitation.
The FSBO sites will be dead, the Google's and Trulia's are really going to have to step up. And yes the MLS and NAR, along with the traditional business model will be threatened.
I'm grabbing my popcorn now to see how it all unfolds.
Great comments todd. Too bad more realtors don't understand that you can't stop change - you can only embrace it and try to thrive.
I think a lot of your brethern would still be out there trying to sell 8-Track tapes and buggy whips if they were in those lines of business.
i bet you david lereah will apply for a job at zillow.
The realtors will have as good a chance stopping this new business model as the brick and mortar music retail chains had in stopping MP3 downloads.
The internet and FSBO listings were supposed to be the end of realtors, but it didn't happen. Perhaps they were saved by the bubble. Only time will tell if the realtors will all be zillowed out of business.
Zillow (and others) will do to NAR what Napster did to RIAA.
I'm certain that the NAR will fight back too - citing concerns for the privacy of home sellers, just like RIAA did for the copyrights of song writers (even though many writers wanted to take advantage of the MP3 revolution to cut out the expensive middleman who took a 90% cut)
But, I think that once people get used to the convenience (twisting their rubber arms) of looking for houses on the web - they'll never go back to realtors or brokers.
I mean... can you imagine a world without MP3's?
the traditional MLS is dead!
Just like those guys on the Guinness ads say......BRILLIANT!
Despite anti-spin, Zilow's Zestimate was accurate in my last sale and purchase to within 2%
I still see MLSLI listings coming out 20%-25% above Zestimates... no rush to check'em out, though... They sit forever
Long Island, NY
Casey serin is being hunted like a dog by the KGB in his former country. Evidently he has bad debts there too.
It seems about time. For just about ever, virtually all Realtors charges a 6% commission. Now that seems a bit high when you look at it in dollar terms.
For instance, I can recall back in the late 80's (another bubble that eventually popped) talking with a realtor friend who had my house listed. She was saying that it was so hard to make a decent living and that commissions would likely have to go up.
Up? I asked, you have the listing on my $200,000 house. I am paying you $12,000 to sell it. Why is that not enough? Just sell 1 house a month and you're doing great!
No, no, no, she explained. She I wasn't paying HER $12,000 to sell my house, it was more like $3,000 because the other broker got half and her broker got half of the remaining half leaving her with only $3,000, see?
Nope, I said. I get charged $12,000 out of escrow. I'm paying $12,000. If your slice of the pie is too small, maybe you'd better check the number of slices before you conclude the whole pie is too small.
So, that's a long way of saying that what happened to the stock world is now at the feet of t he real estate world. You can pay full fare or you can DIY it. Seems like a huge opportunity for lawyers to get in the game:
OK, Let's say you pay $250 for a 6 month listing on Zillow. Now you get a buyer. The attorney charges, say $1,500 to handle the transaction. Everybody protected, happy etc. Total cost on a $400,000 house transaction? $1,750. Or, use a housewife cum realtor and pay $24,000.
You decide.
my two cents,
I think its a great idea- im more for free choice then a realtor is always bad...
ive bought sold both with and without realtors... and its nice to asave a commision selling yourself if it works- but im not the typical case, have lots of re experience and am an attorney, so no problems with contracts...
that being said there are good realtors and bad ones like any other business,, and the good ones are worth it in many cases - and help negotiations and closings with a less experienced counter party (they hold there hand so you dont have to)...
its just like full service brokerage vs e trade or whatever, i think its good to have a choice..
my neighbors are a young couple buying a house , and their realtor is doing a good job walking them through teh process and helping them avoid mistakes in contract offer etc,, me I m happy to call up a fsbo and say lets amek a deal..
so I vote for free choice , let the consumer choose whats right for them...
by the way ,, you can already look for houses on the web,,, and that was supposed to end realtors long ago,, but some people want someone to hold there hand in the process and dont want to look up ads and call up a meet strangers at their house and negotitate etc,,,
Im not sayin thats good or bad , just the way it is, me I dont need a realtor in most cases,, but many find it helpful thats all..
It depends how much you think youre time is worth if you do it on your own
Yes Zillow will do for realtors what the Beatles did for barbers.
Has anyone considered that Zillow could actually raise selling prices by exposing the market to a vast pool of potential buyers? Ebay did the same thing to the prices of garage sale junk.
Thats excellent, I truly wish we had zillow available in Canada. Realtors have a much stronger lock on all that data up here.
I wonder if this would help to keep markets more stable overall, or if having such easy access to this info would have any effect on irrational exuberance.
http://vancouvercondo.info
I never use a realtor whore to buy a house. I go direct to the seller, tell him that I will buy his house and cut the price by 5% tell the seller the realtor whore is wortless anyway.
Great, now I just need to be able to use Paypal to make my downpayment and mortgage payments.
so what? you look oline and see what zillow has ur neighbor at and u offer $1 less. Have you looked at Zillow? Way too high anyway.
FSBO is also out of wack. WAY overpriced. It's like a joke going on there.
The bursting of the bubble may put some realtors out of work, however the slowing market will save the realtor profession. When there were bidding wars, any idiot could sell his own home. Now that it is hard to sell a house, many people will find that they could benefit from some professional help.
This is very similar to the tech bubble of the late 90's. When stocks were flying, you didn't need an expensive broker to tell you to buy Yahoo.
The realtor profession isn't going anywhere in the near-term. We need them, how ever what we need them for has changed. Realtors used to be information brokers helping a seller find the right buyer and helping the buyer find the right seller. Now we have the internet for that. However, houses are a big-ticket items to say the least and having a good sales person deliver the sales pitch can secure the transaction more quickly and for a higher price.
After all, the internet has a lot of information about cars but the car dealerships still higher sales people to sell their cars.
Um, have you looked at and actually used Zillow? It's a horrible, painful interface with fake appraisals and even more faulty comps. Unless I am seeing things, I'm seeing homes off of 24th and Southern in Phoenix, AZ going for $300,000 plus! Totally, NOT true although I could use the comps haha.
I think it adds to the choices buyers have and again, Zillow can't show houses or do all the paperwork (maybe an upload is in store?). Did you hear about the Tempe, AZ firm that is putting open houses 'on' in virtual reality? Pretty interesting, but you still can't "smell the place"..
Either way, Zillow has come a long way and it empowers buyers, realtors will need to learn new ways to add value.
Um, have you looked at and actually used Zillow? It's a horrible, painful interface with fake appraisals and even more faulty comps. Unless I am seeing things, I'm seeing homes off of 24th and Southern in Phoenix, AZ going for $300,000 plus! Totally, NOT true although I could use the comps haha.
I think it adds to the choices buyers have and again, Zillow can't show houses or do all the paperwork (maybe an upload is in store?). Did you hear about the Tempe, AZ firm that is putting open houses 'on' in virtual reality? Pretty interesting, but you still can't "smell the place"..
Either way, Zillow has come a long way and it empowers buyers, realtors will need to learn new ways to add value.
Keith said...
>>Too bad more realtors don't understand that you can't stop change - you can only embrace it and try to thrive.
I'm sure you will get your wish with the demise of a portion of the real estate agents that currently exist. But keep in mind that not all realtors fit your woeful description.
Some agents are looking forward to a new day... and Zillow may have yet provided that new day. Change is good for this industry, but it is not you or the rest of the bubble blogs that are going to affect the change you seek. It is going to be folks from the inside that are changing it. Little by little right now because we are in the minority.
But, many of us are in leadership of our various Associations, or on the professional standards and ethics committees, or wherever to help bring on the changes that are overdue in this business. We hear the clients, the public, and yes even the critics and are doing something about it.
I don't sell you or the bulk of your readers short. Most of you all would have no problem buying or selling your own property without hiring a realtor. The Thinker has a great post in this thread. These are exactly the changes that are happening.
Even your foil Greg Swann leads on the kinds of changes that offer much more transparency to the benefit of the consumer. We aren't all bad people just looking to make an easy buck.
The broker/agent business model is what is going to be finally broken in the near future and I couldn't be more pleased. Thanks to Zillow, Google, Trulia, and others that are chipping away at the traditional portals of information.
I want more information as avaliable as can be to help my clients either sell property or for buyers to make better decisions.
I'm a proud paying member of NAR and anything I really don't agree with I am free to challenge as a leader or to simply ignore (but now's the time for change and I'll help any way I can... I owe it to my fellow members... because it is for the better).
Zillow ain't that great. My home is 13 years old and it's not listed by Zillow. Several homes in my neighborhood arent' listed either. Just about every home that is listed in our neighborhood is improperly positioned within the neighborhood. I'm not a fan of Zillow's accuracy either.
My house is almost a mile away from where Zillow thinks it is. That's a joke. The estimate (or ZESTimate, if you prefer) is also far above (by $40,000) what it's worth.
I'm in agreement with Todd. We've been saying this has been coming for quite some time. Not "who" or "when" precisely, but that it was coming to be sure.
It's a bigger threat to the NAR-MLS stranglehold than individual realtors though.
Oh and completely wipes FSBO sites gone.
Just because the zestimate are woefully inaccurate doesn't mean zillow won't put realtors out of business. What is needed is a standard, searchable database for real estate listings - that's what zillow now gives.
And it won't put all realtors out of business, it will just change what they do. When I go to buy or sell a house I will probably be willing to pay for a 'real estate consultant' to do a sanity check on the transaction. But what I do not need, and what I resent, is the way realtors insinuate themselves upon you and follow you around from property to property like you're some kind of helpless moron and then try to talk you into submitting an offer and then demand a commission. Honestly, Todd, so many realtors are just like like seagulls.
If you're a realtor you need to think hard about where you add value and then focus on that, just like any business. Because times they are a changin'.
greg swann will have to find a new job - a used car salesman.
All hail our new lord: Zillow.
I have a better idea for Zillow.
When somebody puts up a home for sale, you have people bid for the right to sell it, or to perform the legal transaction.
So which Mafia family controls Zillow? You all do remember that organized crime made out quite well during the RTC/S&L fiasco.
They are positioning themselves again for round two, only this time the amount they'll skim will have an extra zero on the end.
I sold my last home Sept 2006 by advertising it on craigslist. I used a title company. All I had to do is bring a signed sales agreement from the buyerto the title company and they did all the rest. The selling price was 259,900 I paid about $1,300 in total fees to sell. It was soooo easy anyone can do it, that was my first time without using a realtor.Saved about 16 grand.
I have sold properties with and without realtors. I have had good and bad experiences in both scenarios. There will still be a place for a GOOD realtor, but the 6% b.s. has got to go!
If 6% realtor fees simply go away, will house prices decrease by that amount?
If 6% realtor fees simply go away, will house prices decrease by that amount?
+++++++++++++++
Yes.
Its not going to become a threat until zillow can shake out the high percentage of inaccuarate data. The data they have is either semi-close or way off the mark.
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